what correlates with socionics?

Years ago I came to the realization that socionics is a floating abstraction and has nothing to do with anything else. Either because the other theory of psychology is a bad theory or that there is no correlation between any particular theory and soconics.

Has anyone else come to the same conclusion or is there something that actually correlates with socionics.

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-- Mark Twain

"Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in."
-- Confucius

But seriously, Socionics is just a system of a bunch of categorizations. It makes a bunch of observations of people, takes notes of their behaviors, introspective thoughts, etc, and say "See? These categorizations exist, this is all real".

Socionics makes claims that this is all perhaps something that is in-born. "Types" and "functions" and "Model A" are hypothetically, something like an analogy of the model of the brain. You are born with them. The whole point is to try and correlate all these observations of categorizations with what actually goes on in the brain, if we had some sort of a brain-scanner.

The problem with this approach is that things like (most) "thoughts" and "behaviors" don't start out as some sort of pre-programmed, gene-coded "base" of the brain. But rather, you first have the "base", then you have the thoughts and the behaviors. Basically, you have the hardware (brain), which creates software such as various thoughts or behaviors. It would be like trying to categorize computers for having different OSes and software installed, even though all the hardware is nearly identical. Even though fundamentally all computers have almost the exact same hardware in principle (just that some may be a little bit faster or slower) how they're used can differ greatly depending on what people use them for. In other words, people can install all sorts of different OSes and software on it that can be used to do many different things. And hence, the variation of what the computer can do is going to be almost infinite, even if the hardware starts out as something that is finite and fixed.

Is it pointless to try and categorize computers with what kind of OSes and software that are installed? Probably not, but it only shows that that only changes with the various fashions of the time, and it's hardly something that is innate, or because of due to hardware.

I totally disagree. Socionics talks about the same phenomena as personality psychology and, to an extent, sociology and cultural anthropology. The only difference is that Socionics offers a unique hypothesis about the origins and the natures of these phenomena. On the other hand, personality psychology and other social sciences offer more detail than Socionics when in comes to describing personality traits and their relationships to personality pathology.

You can find the elements of socionics being explored in various forms (with interesting results). For example, a quote fromTHIS article:

Controlling for verbal ability and age, mental folding (intrinsic–dynamic spatial ability), and spatial scaling (extrinsic–static spatial ability) each emerged as unique predictors of overall science scores, with mental folding a stronger predictor than spatial scaling. These spatial skills combined accounted for 8% of the variance in science scores. When considered by scientific discipline, mental folding uniquely predicted both physics and biology scores, and spatial scaling accounted for additional variance in biology and variance in chemistry scores. The children's embedded figures task (intrinsic–static spatial ability) only accounted for variance in chemistry scores. The patterns of association were consistent across the age range.

Intrinsic is defined in the article as within the object, so this would correlate with the element definition of Objects. So intrinsic Static should be compared to Se. Intrinsic dynamic would be the dynamics of objects, so this should be comparable to Te.

Extrinsic refers to the spatial relations between objects, so it matches the element definition of Fields. Extrinsic static = Ti, and extrinsic dynamic = Si.

To add something though, I like the element approach, and find exploring things this way interesting but I guess it's not really what most people probably have in mind when they're talking about socionics. Anyway, just because, here's another quote.

The model is supported by research indicating that object‐based spatial ability (intrinsic) is partially dissociated from environmental (extrinsic) spatial ability (Hegarty, Montello, Richardson, Ishikawa, & Lovelace, 2006). The intrinsic–extrinsic dimension is also supported by the finding that mental rotation (intrinsic–dynamic) and perspective taking (extrinsic–dynamic) are associated with different patterns of brain activation (Zacks, Vettel, & Michelon, 2003) and are also psychometrically distinct (Hegarty & Waller, 2004).

I totally disagree. Socionics talks about the same phenomena as personality psychology and, to an extent, sociology and cultural anthropology. The only difference is that Socionics offers a unique hypothesis about the origins and the natures of these phenomena. On the other hand, personality psychology and other social sciences offer more detail than Socionics when in comes to describing personality traits and their relationships to personality pathology.

Hypothetically, it's alleged to be some sort of regions of the brain, or something other.

Then how do, say, this "in-born region of the brain, Fi", create Fi behaviors? The mechanisms of how they work are not explained, except through the recurse of "Fi behavior is what we observe in Fi types". And I don't just mean as in how neurons work or something, but even as how it works psychologically.

But even then, trying to categorize "hardware" is like trying to categorize the hardware of all different computers. PCs and Macs may seem very different, but hardware-wise, they're both nearly identical. That's because what matters is what OS and what software is being installed on them. And the rest are just superficial appearances and cosmetics.

I'm not saying that people are exactly like that. I'm sure that there are some in-born traits and behaviors of people. But it's also true that people's influence on cognition and environmental influences play a huge role. It's doubtful that hardly any of the thoughts and behaviors that people have right now, are pre-determined and pre-programmed by our genes.

It's a bit of both. Socionics is a floating abstraction, but there is some objective aspects of it as well. It is like imagine if there is a mountain by a river and then there is a map of it that only vaguely resembles it in a very linear and cartoonish manner. Socionics is that vague simplistic map trying to describe something it does not fully comprehend.

The map is not the territory, but it doesn't mean the territory doesn't exist. It just means the map doesn't do the best job of illustrating that territory and on top of that it only covers a small fraction of that territory. That mountain by a river is merely one part of that territory and the rest of the areas are not covered by that map. Hence why Socionics needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but not completely discarded either.

"Nothing happens until the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change."

Projection is ordinary. Person A projects at person B, hoping tovalidate something about person A by the response of person B. However, person B, not wanting to be an obejct of someone elses ego and guarding against existential terror constructs a personality which protects his ego and maintain a certain sense of a robust and real self that is different and separate from person A. Sadly, this robust and real self, cut off by defenses of character from the rest of the world, is quite vulnerable and fragile given that it is imaginary and propped up through external feed back. Person B is dimly aware of this and defends against it all the more, even desperately projecting his anxieties back onto person A, with the hope of shoring up his ego with salubrious validation. All of this happens without A or B acknowledging it, of course. Because to face up to it consciously is shocking, in that this is all anybody is doing or can do and it seems absurd when you realize how pathetic it is.